Abe Stone, Heidegger and Carnap On The Overcoming of Metaphysics

Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics
11th August 2005

Abstract. Carnaps famous demonstration of the nonsensical character of certain sentences
from Heideggers Was ist Metaphysik? has generally not been read as a serious engagement
with or criticism of Heideggers thought. I argue to the contrary. I show, first, that Heidegger
and Carnap are both reacting against the same features of Husserls system, for the same rea-
sons, and, second, that Carnap understood this. I conclude that Carnap is criticizing Heidegger
for carrying out their common project incorrectly.
In his Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Spra-

che (1931), Carnap chooses, as examples of metaphysical nonsense, certain
sentences from Heideggers Was ist Metaphysik? (Heidegger, 1969). This has
not normally been taken as a serious encounter with Heideggers thought.1 I
wish to argue, on the contrary, that Carnap indeed has a serious understanding
and criticism of Heidegger. To this end I will show, first, that both Heidegger
and Carnap are reacting against Husserls philosophical system, in similar
ways and for similar reasons. And I will claim, furthermore, that Carnap
understands this, and that he therefore criticizes Heidegger for carrying out
their common project incorrectly.
What Heidegger and Carnap both saw, correctly, is that Husserl solves
certain problems in Kants theoretical philosophy by in effect reconstitut-
ing pre-Kantian metaphysics within the framework of Kantian epistemology.
This horrified them, and for exactly the reason it would have horrified Kant:
because, namely, it meant shoring up the theoretical philosophys demonstra-
tion of the possibility of science at the expense of the practical philosophys
demonstration of the possibility of freedom. Each, in response, put forward a
new and improved version of the original Kantian strategy: a new explanation
of how science is possible which would once and for all rule out the return of
traditional metaphysics, and thereby once and for all protect the possibility of
ethics.
To see this in detail, I will begin with a brief look at traditional meta-
physics, at Kants reasons for rejecting it, and at the way Husserlian phe-
nomenology served to reverse and undermine Kant.
1. What is metaphysics (and why does it need overcoming)?
Traditional ontology2 is a hierarchy, the elements of which are the highest

genera of beings: the most universal kinds of beings whose members share,
strictly speaking, a common essence. Among such highest genera, there are
uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.1

2
several fundamental ones, namely the highest genera of substances. The hier-
archy therefore has a double structure. To each highest substantial genus, first
of all, there correspond a series of genera of accidentsbeings which can
exist only by inhering (perhaps indirectly) in a substance as substrate. But,
secondly, there is a hierarchy among the substantial genera themselves, in
which some are (causally) prior to others. Finally, the entire structure depends
on something which is not a member of any genus, and in a sense not a being
at all, called God or the One.
Each special science studies a single sphere or region of being: that is, a
single highest genus of substance, along with its dependent accidental genera.
Traditional metaphysicians disagree on just what such spheres there are, but
perhaps the most popular answer is (in order from prior to posterior): intellect
(nous) (sometimes called spirit [pneuma]), soul (psuche), nature (phusis).
In addition, there is a discipline of logic, which studies the analogous struc-
ture of genera found in every sphere. Finally, there is metaphysics. Meta-
physics is, in a sense, simply the special science of the most prior sphere
i.e., first philosophy. Because, however, of the causal dependence of all
other spheres on the first one, metaphysics is also the science of the first and
most universal principles (archai) and causes of being as such. In knowing
that first region, in other words, the metaphysician knows all subject matters
together; the metaphysician knows all beings, in particular, just insofar as
they are beingsknows them, that is, with respect to their transcenden-
tal predicates. Metaphysical knowledge, finally, because it is transcendental
knowledge, is also knowledge of the possibility of science: of each special
science individually, and of science in general as a unified whole. The prac-
titioners of each special science know the members of a certain region of
being, but only the metaphysician, who knows the first causes and principles
of those beings, can say why that science is possible. And because those first
causes and principles belong in every case to the single, primary region, the
metaphysician at the same time knows the unity of all sciences with respect
to their essential ground.
Kant, as is well known, comes to this traditional system as an all-destroyer.
The objects of our knowledge, he says, must be given to us in intuition. But
we human beings have only sensible, not intellectual, intuition. Hence the
objects of theoretical knowledge may be physical (objects of outer sense) or
psychological (objects of inner sense), but they cannot be noumenal (purely
intelligible).3 Metaphysics as first philosophythe theoretical science of the
supersensibleis thus not a possible (human) science.
But Kant does not therefore deny the validity of a certain kind of meta-
physics. He holds that sensible things are phenomenawhich is to say, that
their mode of being is essentially that of appearance to creatures like us. This
is an extremely defective mode of being. Its very defectiveness, however,
is also what makes metaphysical knowledge about such phenomenal beings

Heidegger and Carnap 3
possible for us. To be, for them, is to be a possible object of our cognitive
faculties; their transcendental predicates thus derive from the form of those
faculties. Phenomenal beings, in other words, are transcendentally ideal: the
form of our cognitive faculties is for them the principle and cause of being
as such. Thus we can have the part of metaphysics which concerns itself
with nature (with the metaphysical principles and causesAnfangsgrunde
of natural science). But this metaphysics is based, ultimately, on showing the
possibility of an objective consciousness (of an object for us), rather than the
possibility of an object per se (an sich), and it therefore is not based on and
does not form a part of a more general discipline which could claim the proud
name of an ontologya discipline which would know the first principles and
causes of all beings in general.
Why did Kant want thus to destroy metaphysics while at the same time
saving it? Kant believes, of course, that traditional metaphysics fails in a the-
oretical sense, on its own terms: it falls into contradictions. One might expect,
then, that the main motive behind his project would be to combat the impres-
sion, created by that failure, that perhaps science is after all impossiblei.e.,
to defend us against the threat of theoretical skepticism. But, although Kant
does indeed worry about the scandal to philosophy which that threat rep-
resents, he makes it clear, at least by the time of the B edition of the first
Critique, that there is a far more important motive, having to do not with the-
oretical but with practical philosophy: he needs to show that human freedom,
and thus human morality, is at least thinkable without contradiction.
The problem is that human beings have bodies, which is to say that the
actions of a human being are physical actions of its body and that physical
passions of that body cause pleasure and paini.e., that a human being has
a private interest in a certain body. Morality, however, on Kants analysis,
involves judging (according to law) how one ought to act independently of
ones private interests. The very same human being, in other words, whose
will is pathological (determinable by physical passions) must also be able
to issue commands which contradict those determinations. Since, however, a
command cannot be valid if issued to someone unable to fulfill it, morality
requires freedomthat is, the ability to act independently of physical efficient
causation.
In Kants system this is prevented from being a contradiction by tran-
scendental idealism. Our metaphysical knowledge, in particular of causal
necessity, is knowledge, not about beings per se, but about phenomena. The
very act of delimitation, moreover, by which (through the faculty of reason)
we come to know both the legitimacy and the limits of our metaphysical
knowledge, is one which requires us already to take up the standpoint of an
intelligible being. Hence when we think of a human body acting because it is
acted upon (pathologically), we are indeed applying an a priori principle of
universal causal necessity: without such a principle, we could not understand

4
action and passion at all. But, because that principle applies only to phenom-
ena and yields the necessity of a merely phenomenal relationship, it is not
inconsistent with an independent, prior, noumenal causation by the will. This
solution requires an analysis of natural causation which is in a certain sense
universal and a priori, but at the same time limited (for theoretical purposes)
to the natural, sensible world alone. That is: it requires that metaphysics be
preserved, but only in a limited form.
We can take Kants procedure as paradigmatic of what it means to over-
come metaphysics. It has three important features. (I) Far from simply re-
jecting it, Kant explains what is right about traditional metaphysics: that the
knowledge of transcendental causes and principles is a knowledge of the pos-
sibility and unity of science. But (II) he limits the scope and pretensions of
this metaphysical knowledge, denying that it has its own supersensible sphere
of subject matter. And (III) he does so in order to save practical philosophy, by
establishing our right to think freedom and morality for practical purposes
or, as he puts it, by eliminating knowledge (Wissen) to leave room for faith
(Glauben) (Kant, 1990, Bxxx).
Kants successors, however, mostly agreed that his solution leaves some-
thing to be desired, in two respects. First, the idea of an in-principle unknow-
able realm of Dinge an sich seemed to them absurd. Second, metaphysics of
nature is allegedly possible for us because it is concerned merely with the
form of our own cognitive faculties. But what are these faculties, and why
doesnt our knowledge of them itself require justification?
Husserl is one of many philosophers who face this post-Kantian problem
situation. Like many of them, he tries to solve both the above problems at
once by in some way identifying our knowledge about our own faculties
with our understanding of the way appearances depend on Dinge an sich. His
strategy is distinctive, however, in that he literally restores a sphere of neces-
sary, supersensible being as the subject matter of first philosophy. He agrees
that objects of the special sciences are phenomenal. But a phenomenon, he
maintains, is not the appearing of an unknowable Ding an sich; it is just that
whose being depends on its appearing to usthat is, on its being rationally
posited by us, on the basis of an intentional interpretation of sense data, as
existing. It follows that the principles and causes of all beings as such are the
states of pure consciousness (Erlebnisse) in which such intentional interpre-
tations take place. Phenomenology, the science of essence in the region of
pure consciousness, is therefore the one science by which all special sciences
are unified and by which their possibility is absolutely demonstrated, i.e. by
which they are absolutely grounded. In it,
an ascent occurs from their [i.e., the special sciences] beginnings and
grounds to the primal grounds [Urgrunden], the primal beginnings [Ur-
anfangen], the true archai. But these lie, one and all, in pure conscious-
ness, in which every possible being [alles moglicherweise Seiende] . . .

is subjectively constituted in essentially proper formations of conscious-

ness. (Husserl, 1956, 169)4
Phenomenologys own special subject matter, the primal region (Urregion) of
pure consciousness, is a realm of absolute, necessary being, separated from
all other spheres by an abyss of sense.5
As Kant himself would have predicted, however, this solution to the prob-
lems in his theoretical philosophy plays havoc with the basis of the practical
philosophy. Husserl does allow for an objective science of ethics: just as mere
things (bloe Sachen) gain objective existence by being rationally posited on
the basis of an interpretation of sense data, so too can things be objectively
valuable, or actions objectively desirable, insofar as they are rationally so
posited on the basis of emotional and volitional data (85, p. 173; 117,
p. 244). By this very analogy, however, it is clear that ethics so understood is
just another special science, albeit of spirit (Geist), rather than of nature. By
means of this science I can understand human beings (including my own self
when I regard myself as a human being) as subject to duties which possibly go
against their inclinations. But human beings are not thereby free in the strict
Kantian sense of being autonomous. Ethical laws are possible for the same
reason and in the same way as natural ones: what is objectively desirable is
what necessarily appears desirable. In phenomenology we ascend from the
principles and grounds of ethics to true principles and grounds in the realm
of pure consciousness.6
The self which has perfect freedom (Husserl, 1922, 31, p. 55), on the
other hand, is not, according to Husserl, this human being within the world,
and its freedom is not a freedom to act in the world independently of private
interest. It is the pure ego: the source of that rational positing upon which
all transcendent things depend for their being. Its freedom, therefore, is a
freedom to modify the direction and character of positing (92, p. 192) or,
ultimately, to suspend such positing altogether, to carry out the phenomeno-
logical reduction (31, p. 55): i.e., to annihilate the world. Because, in other
words, the pure ego occupies the place reserved for God in traditional meta-
physics, its freedom is divine, rather than human; its motives (if any) cannot
be on a par with human inclinations or ethical principles. This divine freedom
could perhaps be the basis of a kind of ethics, and even a kind of autonomy.
But the ethics would be Gnostic ethics, not Kantian; the command which the
transcendental subject autonomously gives itself would be: Return to your
own true infinite nature.
Husserls system, in other words, saves the theoretical philosophy (and
thus heads off the threat of theoretical skepticism) only by giving up on what
Kant thought of as its primary purpose: namely, to show that the possibility of
science does not contradict the possibility of freedom. From a Kantian point
of view, then, the emergence of Husserls system is a sign that metaphysics
must still be overcome.

6
2. Heideggers Attempt at Overcoming Metaphysics
Although the phrase overcoming of metaphysics derives here from Carnap,

we have it on Heideggers authority that he would like it applied to his un-
dertaking, as well: in his 1943 Afterword to Was ist Metaphysik? (in part a
reply to Carnaps criticisms) he says that the title question originates from
a thinking which has already entered into the overcoming of metaphysics
(Heidegger, 1969, 43). If the above analysis is correct, we should thus look for
our same three characteristics in Heideggers project: (I) it should preserve the
function of metaphysics as demonstrating the possibility and unity of science;
(II) it should limit metaphysics pretensions to having its own supersensible
realm of subject matter; and (III) this should be done in order to make it
possible to think human freedom.
As to (I), is it not obvious, given the title, that Heidegger does not intend
to do away with metaphysics entirely? A closer look might easily lead to
the opposite conclusion. For the answer to the title question turns out to be
that the subject of metaphysics isnothing. How could a field whose subject
matter is nothing serve to ground and unify the special sciences?
The simple answer is: because nothing unifies and explains the possibility
of all the special sciences. Heidegger begins, after all, by saying just that: that,
in todays state of disintegrated [zerfallene] manifoldness of disciplinesa
manifold held together only by the technical organization of universities and
faculties and given significance, as a whole, only by the practical positing
of ends by practitioners of the various disciplinesthe roots of the sciences
in their essential ground are dead (25). But isnt this latter a complaint about
the present state of things, which Heidegger hopes to rectify? Yes and no.
Heidegger does want to recover the unity of science. But when he turns to
saying what the sciences actually have in common, he describes it as a freely
chosen deportment [Haltung] of human existence (26).
Perhaps this expression seems obscure. That should come as no surprise:
Heidegger is famous for his obscurity, after all. Still, a reader may reasonably
expect an interpretation such as mine to clarify such obscurities, or may at
least expect that interpretive work will proceed in the direction of fully clar-
ifying them. I will try to do that to some extent. I must also point out right
away, however, that such a project is philosophically problematic, and that,
moreover, there is a similar problem in Carnaps case. The problem stems,
in each case, from the central role that each gives to a kind of analysis of
language, and thus to the demand for a kind of clarity or transparency in
the use of language. I will argue, indeed, that the key issue between the two
thinkers concerns precisely this: not the unity of science, or the status of logic,
or the criticism of Husserl (on all of which they agree), but the question: what
constitutes a responsible and therefore clear and significant use of language?
In each case, the absence of certain kinds of clarity, or the absence of certain

kinds of explanation or justification, stems in large part from the fact that
those kinds of clarity are in conflict with the kind that each considers philo-
sophically imperative: what seems like clarity to us would be condemned
by them as involving an abuse of language. Their obscurity, in other words,
is largely essential to their positions. One cannot sayor cannot coherently
saythe same things they do, only with the obscurity removed. Any clarifica-
tion on our part is therefore likely to involve either a (perhaps unrecognized)
disagreement with the position in question or a (perhaps unintentional) failure
of coherence.
So we should not expect that phrases such as free deportment of human
existence can be harmlessly replaced with something clearer. Still, I will, at
both of the risks just mentioned, say one thing about it, namely that it points
to the possibility and unity of science as ultimately practical issues. What is
essential to each of the sciences, and to all the sciences in common, is some-
thing freely chosen by human beings qua scientists: a certain deportment or
attitude towards the world. But it turns out, then, that there is, indeed, nothing
to ground and unify the special sciences other than the practical positing of
ends. Or: what grounds and unifies the special sciences is a practical unity,
and, other than thati.e., from the point of view of theorynothing. If there
is a discipline of metaphysics, then, its subject matter is nothing.
But something seems to have gone wrong here. How did we get from the
claim that, from a theoretical point of view, nothing grounds and unifies the
special sciences, to the conclusion that a (theoretical?) discipline which stud-
ies nothing could demonstrate their unity and possibility? One might rather
think to conclude that something demonstrates the possibility of each special
science, only not the same thing in each case. And yet there are independent
grounds for thinking that the possibility of science is explained by nothing.
We can best see this by beginning with Husserls description of the theo-
retical attitudethat is, of the purely objective attitude appropriate to science.
According to Husserl, this is the attitude in which the subject has posited an
object merely as being, without carrying out any additional act (for exam-
ple, of valuing). According to Husserl himself, then, the fact that nothing
grounds and unifies the special sciences can be seen as deriving from the
essential feature of objective consciousness in general. For if we look for
something essential to the attitude or deportment of science, what we find is
not a peculiar presence but a peculiar absence: not a something, but a nothing.
Heidegger simply follows Husserl, then, when he says that, while there are
many ways in which human beings deport themselves towards beings, what
is unique to science is that its deportment is only towards a being: toward
the being itselfand beyond that, nothing (26), and concludes that it is
this beyond that, nothing which unifies science and makes it possible. But
then, if metaphysics knows all beings as such (the objects of all sciences)
by knowing such a grounding and unifying principle, the proper concern

8
of metaphysics must be nothing. And so Heidegger asks his metaphysical

question: How stands it with this nothing? (ibid.).
At this point we may feel a tendency to giggle. The transition either from
Nothing grounds and unifies the sciences or from Science studies beings,
and beyond that nothing to How stands it with this nothing? sounds suspi-
ciously like a joke. It sounds, in fact, like a particular kind of jokea pun, or
a related type of wordplay.7 And it is indeed very like such a joke. Heidegger
asks us, in all seriousness, to do deliberately what a pun unexpectedly forces
us to do: listen to what we really said, and take responsibility for it. Science,
he claims, has already betrayed itself in speech: there, where it seeks to
enunciate its own essence, it calls the nothing to its aid (Heidegger, 1969,
27). Later, he returns to this point, now not with respect to science but to all
of us collectively: we do know [kennen] the nothing, he says, even if only
as that about which we every day carelessly speak (29). The overcoming of
metaphysics will rest on this demand that we must now mean (take responsi-
bility for) what we have already carelessly said. It will rest, that is, as I have
already promised above, on a method for the analysis of language.8
We might, however, concede at this point that nothing is in some way an
essential ground of science, and still doubt that it is the proper object of
metaphysics. Metaphysics was supposed to ground and unify the sciences by
studying, not just any essential thing which they happen to have in common,
but the first causes and principles of beings as such (the transcendental causes
and principles). Is the nothing a cause and principle of being?
In Husserls system there is a direct route, leading through logic, from
general conditions on theoretical positing to general conditions on beings as
such. Husserl understands logic in a traditional way: it studies the empty
form of a region [of being] in general, i.e. the analogous structure of cate-
gories which is found in every such region (see Husserl, 1922, 10, pp. 212).
The logician therefore knows laws which apply to all beings as such. The
phenomenologist, however, knows why these laws apply to all beings, be-
cause the phenomenologist can relate them to the essential possibilities for
transitions between different kinds of theoretical positing (147, pp. 3056).
From this point of view, the beyond that, nothing of the theoretical attitude,
and the corresponding finitude common to all beings, is easily explained: it
simply expresses the logical law that everything is itself and not anything
else: the law that (not-not-x) = x.9 And that law, like all logical laws, has a
phenomenological ground: in this case, the essential possibility of transition
from the positing of x to the positing of not-x, and then, by the very same
process, back to x once again.
Heidegger cannot follow this route, however, if his overcoming of meta-
physics is to have feature (II). For it is a route which leads back from Husser-
lian logic to Husserlian metaphysicsi.e. to phenomenology as the science
of the supersensible realm. He therefore makes two claims. First, that the

transition to not-x is itself made possible only by an encounter with the noth-
ing: since a being is not-nothing before it is not-something-else, the nothing
is more primordial than the not and negation (Heidegger, 1969, 28). Second,
that this prior encounter with the nothing is not due to a faculty of ours, i.e. is
not a matter of anything like positing.
To establish the latter point, he introduces the concept of mood (Stim-
mung), as a way of encountering the world which does not involve a faculty,
and in particular a fundamental mood (Grundstimmung) of indeterminate
unease or dread, which (following Kierkegaard) he calls Angst. In this mood
all things and we ourselves sink into indifference (32). In Husserlian terms
we might say: it is a mood in which the beings themselves that we have
posited (including ourselves) do not support our further, valuing acts.10 Thus
this is a mood in which we encounter beings in general, in their finitude,
through a kind of encounter with the form of our facultiesnot, however, in
Husserls way, by showing that those beings depend on our act of positing
and that we are therefore free to annihilate them. The encounter with the
finitude of beings is rather by way of an encounter with our own finitude
with, so to speak, our un-facultyin the face of the nothing: In Angst there
occurs no annihilation [Vernichtung] of the whole of beings per se, but just as
little do we carry out a negation of beings as a whole in order first to attain
the nothing. . . . The nothing itself nihilates [nichtet] (Heidegger, 1969, 34).
And, again, Heidegger claims that we have already said this. We say: that
before which and about which we had Angst was actuallynothing. In fact,
the nothing itselfas suchwas there (33).
The nothing encountered in this way, however, is the very nothing that
demonstrates the possibility and unity of the sciences. What threatens, in
Angst, to sink into insignificance, is not any particular being or region of
beings, but all beings as a whole. And it is this general threat of insignificance
which makes science possible: without it, there could not be the beyond that
nothing of the theoretical attitude, by which a being is encountered merely
as itself, rather than as valuable or significant for us:
Only because the nothing is revealed can science make beings themselves
into the object of inquiry. Only if science exists out of metaphysics, is it
capable of continually attaining anew to its essential task. (4041)
But the nothing encountered in Angst is also, on the other hand, what is essen-
tial to every being as such. Before a being can be itself rather than another, it
must be a being rather than nothing. What belongs to beings (Seiende) simply
as such, then, rather than as this or that particular being, is this relation to the
nothing of beings as a whole (35). The condition of possibility of beings as
such, theni.e., the being (Sein) of beings per seis this very same nothing.
Heideggers overcoming of metaphysics thus fulfills our criterion (I), and
at the same time also criterion (II), but in a way which avoids the problems
with Kants. It does not limit metaphysics by drawing, within the realm of

10
beings, a line around the range of our cognitive faculties, and then showing
that the supersensible beings which would be the subject matter of meta-
physics lie outside. We do know the nothingonly, not by a faculty, i.e.
not as a being; the nothing is always, with respect to any being or region
of beings, the beyond that, nothing: neither an object, nor a being at all
(35). Whereas for Kant, in other words, the limitation of metaphysics was at
the same time a limitation of science, for Heidegger, metaphysics is limited,
but science is not. Science will answer every question we have about beings.
It follows that we were wrong to think of metaphysics as a kind of science or
theoretical discipline which is about nothing in the sense of having nothing
as its subject matter. Since the nothing is not a being, metaphysics, which is
about nothing, is not a science (41).
If metaphysicsi.e., philosophy, strictly speakingis not a science, then
what is it, and in what sense is it about the nothing? This brings us to point
(III). In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger seems so clearly, and at such length, to treat
of practical issues, that that book has often been mistaken for a moralizing
book of (existentialist) ethics.11 Here in Was ist Metaphysik? he is much
briefer, but the nature and standpoint of the ethical concern is clearer. The
overcoming of metaphysics is necessary to establish the very possibility of
freedom,12 thus of morality, for a being like us (the kind of being Heidegger
calls Dasein):
Abiding by itself out [sichhineinhaltend] into the nothing, Dasein is
always already out beyond beings as a whole. We call this being-out
beyond beings transcendence. If Dasein were not, in the ground of its
essence, transcending, which now means: if it did not in advance abide
by itself out [sich nicht im vornhinein . . . hineinhalten] into the nothing,
then it could never relate to beings, thus also not to itself.
Without primordial revelation of the nothing, no being-oneself and
no freedom. (Heidegger, 1969, 35)
Sichhineinhalten is a (very unusual) verb which means literally to hold one-
self out into. But etwas einhalten means to abide by or conform to or com-
ply with something, and is thus connected with Haltung (deportment) and
Verhaltung (behavior). That metaphysics is about nothing means: that the
possibility and unity of science is demonstrated only in Daseins encounter
with its own un-faculty, with its own possible inability to take up a Haltung
(in which, as Heidegger puts it, it finds that it sich an nichts halten kann
[32]): that is, with its own possible insignificance to itself. But to know one-
self as possibly insignificant to oneself is at the same time to know oneself
as ultimately responsible for ones own significance. Knowing ourselves as
finite, as beings among beings, we also know ourselves as having a finite
interest, in pursuit of which we have already spoken carelessly (have taken
no responsibility for our word). But we can know this only because we find
ourselves to be commanded (or called), and therefore to be (possibly) free.

What metaphysics offers is not a theory, but a demand, and the demand itself
is the demonstration of our freedom: that we are free to listen to, and take
responsibility for, what we have really said; to abide by the necessity of our
own language, our own self-legislation as rational (i.e., speaking) beings; to
abide by ourselves out into the nothing; to comply with our own finite nature.
That is: that we are free to be our own (true, proper) selveswhich, if you
like, you could call the categorical imperative.
3. Carnaps Alternative
Overcoming of metaphysics is Carnaps phrase, and we must now justify

our use of it, by showing, first, that his overcoming, too, has the three features
which we identified in Kant and Heidegger, and, second, that the metaphysics
being overcome in his case is also Husserls. Since, however, the Uberwin-
dung itself does not contain anything like a complete system, we will have
to rely also on Carnaps other writings: especially on his major early work,
the Aufbau (Carnap, 1974). There is some risk involved in this procedure
(because Carnaps position changed throughout the period in question), but
with caution the risk can be kept to an acceptable level.
First, however, it will be useful to introduce a few more details of Husserls
system. Ontologically, it is a traditional double hierarchy. There are regions
or spheres of being, and perfectly traditional ones, except that (due to Kants
Copernican revolution) the traditional order is reversed: after the new Ur-
region of pure consciousness come the region of nature, the psychological
region, and finally a region (or perhaps many regions) of Geist. Each such
region is based upon a single highest genus of concrete objects (individua),
corresponding to the traditional highest genera of substances: in pure con-
sciousness, for example, Erlebnisse; in nature, things (Dinge). But each
region also contains a hierarchy of abstract generagenera of singular ab-
stracta and of what Husserl calls categorial or syntactic objects (for ex-
ample, classes and relations) (see Husserl, 1922, 1116, pp. 2332). This
structure of logical modifications, found analogously in each region, is the
concern of logic. In addition, however, to the formal essence which each
object has by virtue of its position in the logical hierarchy, there are also
truths of material (sachliche) essence, which apply to objects as members
of some species or genusultimately, some region of being. Thus the special
sciences, which are individuated (as in Aristotle) by the regions they study,
are each broadly divided into two parts: a science of essence and a science
of matters of fact.13 Finally, there are what might be called matters of
metaphysical essence: necessary truths about objects which apply in virtue
of their dependence on objects in prior regions, and ultimately within the
Urregion of pure consciousness.

12
This ontological structure translates directly into an epistemological one,

because all being in the posterior regions rests on positing Erlebnisse in the
realm of pure consciousness, and in particular on originary (immediate) ratio-
nal theoretical positings, i.e. intuitions. The various sciences are therefore
based on various types of intuition. Sciences of matters of fact, on the one
hand, correspond to the kinds of ordinary intuition, analogous to percep-
tion. Sciences of essence, on the other hand, and formal logic, correspond
to (formal or material) essential insight (Wesensschau). Husserl equates
formal- and material-essential insight, respectively, as sources of knowledge,
to Kants analytic and synthetic a priori, whereas ordinary perceptual in-
tuition, the source of knowledge about matters of fact, corresponds to the
Kantian synthetic a posteriori (10, p. 22; 16, p. 31). Phenomenology, finally,
as the science of essence in the region of pure consciousness, has knowledge
of the way beings in one region are dependent on those in another.
In Carnaps doctoral thesis, Der Raum (1922), he applies the above
Husserlian apparatus to the problem of determining our sources of knowledge
about space.14 Is our knowledge of space analytic, synthetic a priori, or em-
pirical? Carnap answers, in effect: it depends on what you mean by space.
His answer foreshadows much of his future thought, but is also based directly
on Husserls remark about this question in Ideen I: that, whereas Euclidean
manifold is a formal category (logical modification), our knowledge of geom-
etry as it applies to physical objects is a knowledge of material essence within
the region of nature (13, p. 27). Der Raum is largely an expansion and ex-
plication of that one remark. Our knowledge of formal space, Carnap says,
is analytic, i.e. derives from formal ontology in Husserls sense, but our
knowledge of the intuitive space in which sensible objects are necessarily
found is synthetic a priori, i.e. material-essential (and here again he mentions
Husserl explicitly) (Carnap, 1922, 223; 61; 645). There is one important
innovation: Carnap claims that essential (a priori) knowledge of intuitive
space extends only to its topological properties, whereas the full structure of
physical space requires also a choice of metric. This latter choice is informed
by the actual behavior of objects (e.g. measuring rods), and knowledge of
physical space is thus in part a posteriorias Carnap also says, a knowledge
of matters of fact. But such considerations never force the choice of one
metric or another: our knowledge of physical space also depends on free
positing (wahlfreie Setzung) (see again 1922, 645). This last point, which
has no equivalent in Husserl, is important. Still more telling is that Carnap
compares the choice involved here to a choice of language, although at this
stage he sees this as a mere analogy. On the whole, however, the treatment of
Der Raum is more or less orthodoxly Husserlian.
In the more ambitious project of the Aufbau the correspondence with
Husserls system is, if anything, even easier to trace. The overall ontolog-
ical structure of regions or spheres or realms of being is nearly identical.

Carnaps initial realm of the autopsychological clearly corresponds (as he

explicitly points out [1974, 64, p. 86]) to Husserls region of pure con-
sciousness; its fundamental objects are called Erlebnisse. Next comes the
physical realm, where, as in Husserl, the fundamental objects are things.
Carnap even follows Husserl on the detailed steps by which such things
are constituted: first, a level of visual things (Sehdinge), i.e. mere colored
surfaces moving in space (Husserl, 1922, 151, p. 316; Carnap, 1974, 128,
p. 170); then, a narrowly physical level of quantitative description in which
movement is determined by strict causal law (Husserl, 1922, loc. cit. and
52, pp. 97102; Carnap, 1974, 136, pp. 18082); finally, the level of inter-
subjective objects (though in this case, as both make clear, there is a kind
of interweaving by which higher-order, psychological objects are used to
complete the constitution of lower-order, physical ones) (Husserl, 1922, 151,
p. 317; Carnap, 1974, 1489, pp. 198200). After the physical realm comes
a heteropsychological one (corresponding to Husserls psychological re-
gion), and finally a realm or realms of Geist. Carnap follows Husserl, more-
over, in referring to the process responsible for this structure, by which one
object is founded on another, as Konstitution (Carnap, 1974, 12, pp. 12).
Carnap, however, makes one fundamental departure from his Husserlian
model. Where Husserl holds that there are two types of constitutionone
responsible for the hierarchy of logical forms and the other for the hierarchy
of regions of beingCarnap requires only the first. This, he emphasizes, is
the most important thesis of his constitution-theory, and the basis for its
most important conclusion: that the objects do not disintegrate [zerfallen
nicht] into different, unconnected realms, but rather there is only one realm of
objects and therefore only one science (4, p. 4; Carnaps emphasis). How,
then, can he speak of separate realms of being, paralleling Husserls regions?
Carnap claims that this division is a practical one, based on the technical
organization of scientific disciplines. Theoretically speaking, although every
level of the constitutional system defines a new type of object (in Russells
sense), these types are equivalent to Husserls formal (syntactic) categories:15
they are logical modifications of the basic objects. Thus the system is a logical
construction of the world.
Of our three features, then, feature (I) is clearly present: there is still a dis-
cipline which serves to unify the sciences and to demonstrate their possibility.
In the Aufbau this discipline is called constitution theory; in the Uberwin-
dung it is called metalogic, although Carnap continues to use constitution
theory in that period, as well. It demonstrates the possibility of the sciences
by establishing the objectivity of their concepts: in particular, by showing
how all the concepts they need could in principle be rationally applied using
finite operations on a finite stream of sense datathat is, by showing how we
could in principle substitute discursive reasoning (diskursive Schlue) for
intuitive recognition (intuitive Erkenntnis) (1974, 54, p. 74; see also 100,

14
pp. 1389; 21, p. 27; Foreword, pp. xixxx). In other words, it establishes
the right of a finite (discursive) rational being like ourselves to use all those
concepts. In so doing, it also provides an even stronger unification of the
sciences than does traditional metaphysics (i.e., Husserlian phenomenology),
because it shows how all scientific concepts can be logically derived from, or
reduced to, a common basis.16
If Carnaps project so effectively satisfies criterion (I), however, we might
begin to worry about criterion (II). If the sciences are to be unified by tracing
them all back to a fundamental realm of objects, wont the science of that
realm, as it does in Husserl, now take the place of traditional metaphysics?
But Carnap does not intend to ground posterior sciences by deriving their
authority from that of prior ones. Rather, like Heidegger, he is interested in
what the sciences as such have in common. What is to ground and unify the
sciences is not some putative science of autopsychology, but rather constitu-
tion theory, and what the constitution theorist knows is not some special facts
about the essence of Erlebnisse. Any knowledge of that kind would have to
come from empirical psychology (Carnap, 1974, 67, pp. 913). Constitution
theory concerns, rather, the possible logical relationships between concepts
in general; the real grounding and unifying powerand this becomes, if any-
thing, even clearer when the discipline is called metalogiccomes from
logic. And Carnap, like Husserl, holds that logic is not its own realm at all,
but treats of just those concepts which allow of being applied to any arbitrary
realm (154, p. 207).17
There is a worry remaining, however, similar to the problem that Heideg-
ger faces at this juncture. It is all very well to say that logic has no realm of its
own, and nevertheless applies to objects in any realm whatsoever. But Husserl
has a phenomenological explanation for that: logic applies in any realm be-
cause it derives from the most basic essential facts about theoretical positing.
Logic is therefore a dangerous ally for Carnap, as it is for Heidegger. Unless
he is careful, an appeal to logic may end up being an appeal to Husserlian
phenomenology, after allor rather: constitution theory, which is supposed
to use logic to demonstrate the unity of the sciences, may itself end up being
(a branch of) phenomenology.
As we saw above, Heideggers response to this problem is to claim that
his nothing is prior to, and presupposed by, logica precondition of (in
Husserls terms) all theoretical positing, but not itself the object of such posit-
ing, i.e. not a being. This, according to him, is why nothing unifies the sci-
ences, and why metaphysics is about nothingi.e. not about beings, not a
science. Carnaps approach appears on the surface quite different. He denies,
first of all, that the truths of logic derive from basic facts about theoretical
positing, and claims, instead, that they are true because of their form, i.e.
because of the rules of our language (see Carnap, 1974, 107, p. 150; 1931,
236). Thus, already in the Aufbau, he is committed to the idea that con-

stitution theory is a science, indeed, but a science whose subject matter is

language. Its legitimation of scientific concepts is really just a demonstration
that scientific terms are meaningful: all objects which are studied in science
must be constitutable, because otherwise their names would have no sense
(1974, 179, p. 252). Similarly, the task of unifying the sciences is really the
task of showing that science, according to the logical meaning [Bedeutung]
of its statements, treats of only one realm (41, p. 56).
But language, for Carnap, is a finite, contingent, empirical thing.18 Hence
if the possibility and unity of science can be demonstrated by clarifying the
logical relationships between our concepts, and if those logical relationships,
in turn, can be explained as (formal and empirical) truths about a language, we
can have the grounding and unifying functions of metaphysics without allow-
ing any realm of necessary, supersensible being. As in Heidegger, moreover,
this limitation of metaphysics involves no line, drawn within the realm of
beings, between the knowable and the unknowable. The line is drawn within
language, between sense and nonsense. The limitation of metaphysics puts
no limit on science, which, within its dimension, runs up against no bounds
(Carnap, 1974, 180, p. 253): every theoretical question which can be asked
at all can be answered within science.
Butand this will lead us to criterion (III)language is conventional.
Logic, if it consists of statements which are true by virtue of the rules of our
language, therefore consists only of conventional stipulations about the use
of signs and of tautologies on the basis of these stipulations (107, p. 150).
Having, in other words, reduced all of Husserls necessities to logical neces-
sity, and logical necessity to linguistic, Carnap is left with only two of the
sources of knowledge which he recognized in Der Raum: besides empirical
(a posteriori) data as the basis for the knowledge of matters of fact, there is
only wahlfreie Setzung. According to the view of constitution theory there
are no other components of knowledge besides these two: the conventional
and the empirical; thus, no synthetic a priori (179, p. 253).
It follows, however, that we were wrong, strictly speaking, to think of met-
alogic or constitution theory as taking over the functions of metaphysics. The
problems of the disunity and ungroundedness of science are problems about
the language chosen by science. Science, in its practical procedure, makes
statements which, according to [their] logical form . . . have to do with many
self-sufficient kinds of object (41, p. 56). As scientific statements, these are
(by the definition of science) all legitimate, which is to say (in this period):
they can all be transformed into statements about a common empirical basis.
The problem is that the language we have so far used to express them does not
make that clear. This is not a theoretical problem. To solve it, we do require
the services of a discipline which studies the possible forms of language,
and which will show how a language could exhibit, in its very form, the
unity and legitimacy of scientific statements. Only given a unified system

16
of all concepts, i.e. a unified language, can we overcome (uberwinden) the

disintegration (Zerfall) of science into disconnected disciplines (2, p. 3).
But the overcoming itself is not a language or a theory of language. It is a free
positing, a stipulation, a choice: the choice to translate, or attempt to translate,
our statements into that formally grounded and unified languagethe choice
to subject our statements to logical analysis. What replaces metaphysics is
strictly speaking something practical:
What still remains over at all for philosophy, if all sentences which mean
[besagen] anything are of an empirical nature and belong to positive
science [Realwissenschaft]? What remains are no sentences, no theory,
no system, but only a method, namely the [method] of logical analysis.
(Carnap, 1931, 237)
For Carnap, in other words, as much as for Heidegger, it turns out that scien-
tific philosophy strictly speaking is not itself a science.
Note that none of this would make sense if, as is often supposed, Carnaps
logical analysis aimed to reveal the true, deep structure of our ordinary
language (as opposed to its surface grammar). Analysis such as that would
no more lie beyond the realm of theory than does, say, archeology. But Carnap
does not believe in deep structure. Logical analysis, according to him, can
only be a project of translating one language into another one: into a logically
correct language, which, though stricter, is not deeper (or more primor-
dial: cf. Der Raum, 65). Thus logical analysis can purify our language of
(practical) error, but it can never reveal more about its structure than does
ordinary (surface) grammar. This will be important to keep in mind in what
follows (and may also help throw light on the differences between Carnap
and Wittgenstein).19
We have now seen that Carnaps project of overcoming of metaphysics is
ultimately a practical, not a theoretical, task. But is it motivated by the desire
to save practical philosophy in a Kantian sense, i.e. to remove the metaphys-
ical errors which seem to rule out the possibility of freedom? Consider, first,
the Foreword to the Aufbau, which begins precisely with a question about
motives: What is the goal of a scientific book?, and continues:
It presents thoughts and tries [will] to persuade the reader of their validity.
But beyond that, the reader also wants to know: from where do these
thoughts come, and where do they lead? . . . Here, outside the borders of
theory, an answer to the second question may be attempted in brief hints.
(Carnap, 1974, Foreword, xvii)
From this we can already learn a crucial (and difficult) lesson about Carnap
as a writer: that, when it comes to the most important matters, he speaks in
brief hints. But we can learn more from reading further. The full answer to
the question which opens the Foreword is provided only in its final para-
graph. There Carnap begins by mentioning unspecified movements from

the philosophical-metaphysical and religious realms which stand against

our attitude (Einstellung) and which precisely today again exert a strong
influence. He continues:
What gives us, nevertheless, the confidence to press through [durchzu-
dringen], with our call for clarity, to a metaphysics-free science? It is the
insight, or, to say it more carefully, the faith that those opposing powers
belong to the past. . . . The faith that the future belongs to [our] attitude
[Gesinnung] bears up our work. (xx)
Now, it can be difficult to attach much weight to Carnaps talk of Glaube,
which I have translated as faithbut which might just as well be trans-
lated as belief.20 Near the end of the Aufbau, however, we find a section
entitled Glauben und Wissenwhich now, given the allusion to Kant, we
must certainly translate as faith and knowledge. In that section (181), Car-
nap discusses the possibility of knowledge which would be non-conceptual
and thus extra-scientific. Such a possibility, he suggests, could lie in faith
[Glauben], for example on the basis of religious revelation (p. 256). In re-
sponse he distinguishes between two things which one might mean by faith. If
the alleged content of faith can indeed be revealed, i.e. asserted in language,
then, however we may have come to know it, it by definition belongs to the
realm of science. But,
if, on the contrary, faith is not something conceptually formulable, but
rather an inner deportment [Haltung] of the human being, then this has
nothing whatsoever to do with the realm of theory, and the result of this
deportment cannot be designated as knowledge [Erkenntnis]. (2567)
Hence the allusion to Kant is accurate: what is meant here by faith in the
second sensea faith which would belong to the realm of praxis, not that of
theoryis faith in the sense of Kantian religion.21
Carnaps statement that the future belongs to our attitude, similarly, is
outside the borders of theory: it is no theoretical prediction, but a choice
of fundamental deportment, or, to say it carefully, a statement of Kantian
rational faith. Even more carefully: of Nietzschean rational faith. For the point
is that we, we scientific philosophers, are philosophers of the future.22 Our
opponents, on the other handthose whose attitude belongs to the past
have expressed no false doctrine: there are no philosophical doctrines, hence
no false ones, to be expressed. They have, rather, made a practical erroran
error in choice of language. They have chosen a language which expresses
the wrong fundamental deportment, because it makes what is really a matter
of Glauben appear to be one of Wissen: a language with (pseudo-)sentences
which in reality serve, not for the presentation of states of affairs, but as
an expression of a life-feeling (Carnap, 1931, 238). These are sentences, it
would seem, about the necessary, supersensible causes and principle of beings
as such: the (apparent) knowledge which needs to be eliminated is that same

18
Wissen which Kant tried to eliminate, and which Husserl reinstated. But here
we run into Carnaps version of a problem we have already encountered in
Heidegger: an explicit clarification of his target (for example, a denial that
we can speak about such necessary, supersensible causes) would itself be an
example of the kind of metaphysical nonsense Carnap is trying to eradicate,
and would invite more such nonsense in response. Instead, speaking in brief
hints, he simply chooses, apparently at random, an example of a meaningless
metaphysical term: Prinzip (for which he later gives the Greek equivalent,
arche), as it occurs in metaphysicians answer to the question, what is the
(highest) principle of the world (or of things, of being, of beings)
(224). Thus he eliminates the apparent Wissen, though without refuting it,
and makes it possible to leave room for Glauben, i.e. for freedom.
We have already seen how Carnaps overcoming of metaphysics accom-
plishes that. Metaphysical unity and groundedness is replaced by logical unity
and groundedness, but Husserlian logic has also been replaced by a free
positing, a stipulation which we must choose: the rules of a language.23 The
very possibility of science thus depends on our freedom to choose a language.
But language is a finite, sensible thing, chosen by a finite (discursive) rational
being. The same subject, in other words, which knows everything, also itself,
only in science, and which therefore knows itself as finite, is, by the very
deportment which makes science possible, also free. It is free to take respon-
sibility for its choice of language, for its own self-legislation as a rational
(i.e., speaking) being. It is free, in particular, to press through with a call
to clarity: free to choose, or intend to choose, a language in which one can
assert only that which a finite rational being could legitimately assert, i.e. in
which that and only that can be said at all, which can be said clearly.24 It is
free, in other words, to abide by its own finite naturewhich, if you like, you
could call the categorical imperative.25
4. Carnaps criticism of Heidegger
We have now established most of what we need to. Carnap and Heidegger,
as we have seen, are reacting against a common intellectual background
reacting against it for the same reasons and in nearly the same way. Suppose
that Carnap was aware of this. Might he not have had serious reasons for
preferring his own version, and might he not have expressed them, if only in
brief hints? It remains only to show that this is indeed the case.
Consider, first, the selection from Was ist Metaphysik? which Carnap ac-
tually chooses to quote:
What is to be researched is the being [das Seiende], and other than that
nothing; the being alone and more than thatnothing; only the being
and beyond thatnothing. How stands it with this nothing? . . . Is there

the nothing only because there is the not, i.e. negation? Or is it the re-
verse? Is there negation and the not only because there is the nothing? . . .
We claim: The nothing is more primordial that the not and negation. . . .
Where do we seek the nothing? How do we find the nothing? . . . We
know the nothing. . . . Angst reveals the nothing. . . . That before which
and about which we had Angst was actually nothing. In fact: the
nothing itselfas suchwas there. . . . How stands it with the nothing?
. . . The nothing itself nihilates.26
The sentences quoted do not occur all together in Heidegger. Nor, however,
are they merely a random selection of sentences, or of ones which happen
to sound particularly nonsensical. They are, rather, as we have seen above in
detail, sentences which express the key points of Heideggers strategy, and
moreover in such a way as to show most clearly how close it is to Carnaps
own. This selection, in other words, is not the work of someone casually
leafing through a silly book in search of some nonsense to mock: it is the
work of a thoughtful reader out to find the exact error in a potentially tempting
alternative to his own approach.
And what, according to Carnap, is that error? These examples, accord-
ing to him, show how historico-grammatical syntax allows metaphysical
nonsense, whereas logical syntax does not (229). Here he has indeed put
his finger on the most basic difference between Heidegger and himself. He
and Heidegger agree that traditional metaphysics involves a practical, not
a theoretical error; that it must therefore be overcome by a philosophical
method; and that that method is a method of analysis of language. But where
Heideggers analysis involves listening to (and taking responsibility for) what
our language, in our careless everyday use of it, already actually saysi.e.,
involves paying attention to historico-grammatical syntaxCarnaps log-
ical syntax is a matter of choosing a new, correct language into which we
will attempt to translate all of our old statements.
That this is Carnaps intent becomes clear when he goes on to offer his
detailed critique. The centerpiece is a table with three columns, of which the
key part is as follows:
A. There is rain outside. There is nothing out- There is not . . . some-
dr(Re) side. thing which is outside.
dr(N i) (x) dr(x)
B. How stands it with this How stands it with this [The equivalent] cannot
rain? (i.e.: what is the nothing? be formed at all.27
rain doing? or: what ?(N i)
else can be stated about
this rain?) ?(Re)
The first column contains perfectly good sentences of customary (ublich)

language, whereas the second column shows a transition, in that same cus-

20
tomary language, from a sensible sentence to a senseless pseudo-sentence.

The third column is supposed to contain sentences in a logically correct
language which correspond to those in the second column; when we get
to row B, however, we find that there is none. Carnap remarks that the sen-
tences in the first column are grammatically in perfect analogy to those in
the second, and that the transition from A and B occurs via grammatically
unobjectionable operations (229). That is: he agrees that Heidegger has un-
covered something real about our customary language, about what we have
already carelessly said. The grammatically allowed structures and transitions
(formation rules and transformation rules) of that language do, indeed, com-
mit us to accepting Heideggers metaphysical question: this (meaningless)
question, in other words, belongs syntactically to the content of our ordinary
sentences.28
It is worth stressing that Carnap agrees with Heidegger up to this point, if
only because some interpreters who see themselves as defending Heidegger
against his attack have ended up taking the opposite side. James Conant, for
example, claims that Carnaps attack stumbles on the need to rule out the
possibility that Heidegger might intend, either all along or after some point,
to use the word nothing in a linguistically innovative . . . manner (2001,
35). Stephan Kaufer, similarly, defends Heideggers strange talk about the
nothing based on the fact that language is flexible and easily accommo-
dates new terms and definitions (2001, 472). Language is indeed flexible;
linguistic innovation is indeed possible. If we knew nothing about Heideg-
gers linguistic methods, it would certainly be hard to rule out that that is
what he intends here, and if we supposed that Carnap knows nothing about
those methods, then it would be hard to defend him against the charge that
he is reading Heidegger uncharitably. In reality, however, nothing could
be more uncharitable than to defend Heideggers use of nothing here as a
linguistic innovation. As we have seen, Heideggers method rests precisely on
showing us what our language already says. So, whatever role there might be
for linguistic innovation in philosophy generally,29 Carnap and Heidegger are
(rightly or wrongly) in agreement that it does not crop up here. To repeat: they
agree (rightly or wrongly) that our customary language already commits us
to these strange questions and answers about the nothing. But that, according
to Carnap, just shows the Unzweckmaigkeit of our language, i.e. of its rules
(Carnap, 1931, 230).
Now, unzweckmaig of course means inconvenient. Here, as always,
Carnap gives us the opportunity to read him as a mere technician. The prob-
lem with our language, on that reading, would be that it gives us the opportu-
nity to fall into stupid blunders (or: howlerswhich gives some indication
of the unfortunate way logical positivism translated to Oxford).30 This would
make sense if one thought that, in addition to its surface grammatical rules,
our language also has a deeper, logical structure: our language might be

inconvenient in that, by virtue of the former, it makes difficult the technical

aim of following the latter. But that, to repeat, is exactly what Carnap does
not think. What then could be the technical error in following the rules of our
language wherever they lead?
We must recall that Carnap speaks in brief hints. Unzweckmaig does
indeed mean inconvenient, but it also means, literally, not conformable
to the endwhere by the end we must understand, in the absence of qual-
ifications: the end in itself.31 The problem, in other words, is not technical,
but practical. What, then, is immoral about the historico-grammatical rules
of our language, which cause us to us to sayor rather, by virtue of which
we have already carelessly saidthat, when there is nothing outside, there
is something outside, namelynothing? Carnap speaks in brief hints. The
drauen alludes to Heideggers daruber hinaus: what we have already said,
thanks to our inherited, customary language, is that there is something outside
the realm of beings (outside the borders of theory).32 We can tell that we have
said this because, by grammatically unobjectionable operations, we arrive at
a question which proposes to us the task of saying something more about the
nothing, or of determining what it doesthat is, at a question which treats
this nothing as a ground of synthesis, as an object. The general answers to
these questionsWe know the nothing (i.e., in the formal mode, We can
say something (more) about the nothing) and The nothing nihilates (i.e.,
The nothing does something appropriate to it)simply make explicit what
has already been said in the question, and in the ordinary sentence which
gave rise to the question. The content of There is nothing outside, in our
customary language, in other words, includes We know the nothing and (in
effect) The nothing nihilates. But this having-already-said, which is, so to
speak, our hereditary sinfulness, must, according to Carnap, not be accepted,
but overcome in faith. The attitude which belongs to the past is trapped, even
against its will, into this sayingthis saying which is unzweckmaig because
it expresses the attitude that we finite agents belong to the past, that we are
not free, that there is no moral law. But our attitude, the attitude of faith to
which the future belongs, is resolved (via the method of logical analysis) to
choose a language in which such an expression will be impossible.
Carnap does, however, make a show of allowing Heidegger one way out.
In light of the gross logical errors revealed by our reading, Carnap says,
one could come to the supposition that the word nothing is perhaps,
in the cited treatise, supposed to have an entirely different significance
than it does elsewhere. And this supposition is further strengthened when
we read there further that the nothing itself as such is there in Angst.
Here it appears that the word nothing is supposed to indicate a certain
emotional condition [gefuhlsmaige Verfassung], perhaps of a religious
kind, or something which grounds such a feeling [Gefuhl]. (231)

22
Carnap allows, that is, that Heideggers talk about the nothing may be under-
stood psychologically.
Now, this kind of charitable reading would, as I have pointed out, leave
Heideggers linguistic method in a shambles, and so from that point of view
Carnap is not seriously proposing that Heidegger might be read this way.
On its own, however, the suggestion that nothing and Angst might be used
as psychological terms is by no means absurd. Indeed, Kierkegaard, from
whom both the term Angst and its connection with nothing derive in this
context, agrees with Carnap on this, as Heidegger well knows.33 In any case,
we should certainly take seriously Carnaps concession that, if this proposed
reading were correct, there would be no logical (i.e., practical) objections
to Heideggers project. We should take that seriously because Carnap himself
adopts such a strategy in the final section of the Aufbau. There he explains
that, although there is no question unanswerable by science, science nev-
ertheless cannot solve the riddles of life, because these are not actually
questions, but practical problems. He gives, as his only example of such a
riddle, the riddle of death:
The riddle of death consists in shock [Erschutterung] at the death of a
fellow human being, or in Angst before ones own death. It has nothing
to do with the questions which can be posed about death. . . . The riddle
consists rather in the task of being done with [fertig zu werden] the
life-situation, to get over [verwinden] the shock. . . . Our thesis of the
answerability of all questions has, indeed, a certain connection with this
task of overcoming, but only one so remote that with this thesis nothing
is said about whether such an overcoming is always in principle possible.
(Carnap, 1974, 183, pp. 26061)34
What is that connection, and why is it so remote? Our thesis, the the-
sis of us scientific philosophers, allows us to overcome only one particular
situation, one particular shock: the situation, the shock, of having inherited
traditional metaphysicsthe crisis which Carnap implicitly compares, in the
Foreword to the Aufbau (pp. xviixviii), to the foundation-crisis in math-
ematics (because it leads to contradictions, albeit in this case to practical
contradictions).35 This overcoming is the practical taskin Kantian terms,
the religious taskof scientific philosophy. If Heideggers talk of the nothing
and of Angst could be read as psychological, in other words, then Carnap
would accept it because it is what he himself would say.
But Heidegger, as we know, cannot possibly allow this reading. And Car-
nap, who understands that impossibility just as well as we do, is easily able to
demonstrate it in Heideggers text. Heidegger, he points out, claims that his
question and answer about the nothing, because they lead us into contradic-
tions, constitute a challenge to the sovereignty of logic within philosophy.
(Heidegger, 1969, 367, cited by Carnap, 1931, 231). Here Carnap is usually
read as attacking Heidegger for being against logic, whereas he himself was

in favor of it.36 In fact, however, as we have seen, what both Heidegger

and Carnap oppose is the sovereignty of logic within philosophy, i.e. the
thought of philosophy, strictly speaking, as a theoretical discipline which
makes assertions about its own special region of beings. The problem is not
that Heidegger challenges logic, but that he thinks he can challenge it by
asserting something which is not a judgment about any being, and over which
logic therefore has no sovereignty. This means that, like it or not, Heidegger
has in fact placed a limit on the reach of science: he has himself come to the
determination that his questions and answers are not unitable with the mode
of thinking of science (Carnap, 1931, 232). And it is due to that mistake that
he remains, as Carnap says, merely one of the numerous metaphysicians of
the present or the past (229 n. 1)rather, that is, than becoming, as he might
have, a rare philosopher of the future.
So, in summary, what is Carnaps accusation against Heidegger? He ac-
cuses him of trying to use assertions where only expression is appropriate
and where, given the danger involved, even expression ought to be limited
to brief hints. He accuses him, in particular, of putting himself (or leaving
himself) in a position where he must treat religious dread as if it revealed
a being, an objectaccuses him, that is, of idolatry, or (what comes to the
same thing from a Kantian point of view) of putting a theoretical dogmatics
before ethics. This is a very serious criticism indeed. Without claiming (as
I certainly would not) that it is one against which Heidegger could have no
defense, I would point out two things about it. First, it is a criticism to which,
as I understand it, Heidegger seriously and repeatedly responded.37 Second,
it is a criticism which finds echoes in later members of Heideggers own,
Continental, philosophical tradition (e.g. in Levinas). This, I think, is enough
to establish what I set out to here: not an attack on or defense of either Carnap
or Heidegger, but simply a case for taking the one as a serious reader of the
other.
If we dont end up in a position to takes sides in Heidegger and Carnaps
debate, howeverand surely, philosophy having moved on, it is far too late
for thatthen what philosophical good is our conclusion? We cannot take
sides in this debate in part because it has changed from a debate into a fun-
damental structural fact about the philosophical world as we have inherited
it. Here in the English-speaking part of that world, in particular, the stamp
of Carnaps will is everywhere present. The way we do philosophythe
way we speak, write, publish; the way we divide our field into disciplines;
the way we arrange requirements and syllabi for our studentsnone of this,
of course, is the product of Carnaps influence alone. But there is nevertheless
no corner in which his influence is not felt (and that applies, most of all, to
those who in the English-speaking world attempt to study or practice Con-
tinental philosophy). If we can understand Carnap as having chosen among
alternatives, and, more importantly, as having chosen for a reason, then we

24
are on the road to once more attempting philosophys always-repeated task

of relating to (knowing) itself and thus becoming free. In other words, we are
on the road to once again becoming philosophers.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stanley Cavell, Jim Conant, Warren Goldfarb, Burt
Hopkins, David Hoy, David Hyder, Mary Leng, Charles Parsons, Hilary Put-
nam, Alan Richardson, Paul Roth, Eric Schliesser, Joshua Schwartz, and Ori
Simchen, as well as audience members at Harvard, the University of British
Columbia, the University of Illinois at Springfield, Seattle University, and at
the 2004 Husserl Circle meeting in Washington, D.C., for helpful comments
on previous versions of this paper.
Notes
1
A partial exception is Michael Friedman, who writes that Carnaps criticism is more
sophisticated and penetrating than one might expect (2000, 11). But he still seems to me to
concede too much, both with that more . . . than one might expect and with his admission
(in agreement, as he says, with James Conant) that Carnap fails to see how the twisting of the
German language is an essential part of Heideggers philosophical method (ibid., n. 16).
Given the portrait of him which Friedmans own work has done so much to establishnamely,
as a very sophisticated and penetrating thinker indeedit would, on the contrary, be surprising
to find Carnap missing something so fundamental in Heidegger. In what follows I will argue
that he understands Heideggers method very well.
2
What follows is a composite picture of the tradition in the form in which it was received
by Kant and (indirectly) by Husserl.
3
Kant further restricts the range of theoretical science to the realm of outer sense (nature)
only, for technical reasons which need not concern us here.
4
Husserl, 1956 (Erste Philosophie) is based on the manuscript of Husserls lectures in
Freiburg during the Winter semester of 1923/24 (see the editors introduction, p. xii). It was
published only posthumously, but it is very likely that Carnap was exposed to some of it, since
he was living near Freiburg at the time and attended Husserls advanced seminars on phe-
nomenology there during 1924 and 1925 (Schuhmann, 1977, 281). Heidegger at this time was
already in Marburg, but was still in close contact with Husserl and presumably also familiar
with his ongoing projects.
5
See Husserl, 1922, 76, p. 141; 49, p. 93; 46, p. 86.
6
Husserl therefore considers Kantian ethics to be absurd. See Husserl, 1988, 40318,
especially 405 ll. 218.
7
Cf. Carroll, 1872, ch. 7.
8
Not the same, obviously, as Carnaps method. There will be plenty to say about the differ-
ence (and similarities) below, but, to anticipate: roughly speaking, Carnap will look forward
(to what we ought now to say) where Heidegger looks back (to what we have said already).

Both methods might also be usefully compared to the method(s) of ordinary language
philosophers such as Austin and the later Wittgenstein. Heideggers call for us to recognize
what our language actually says might even seem to put him closer to that latter camp. In fact,
however, I suspect that both he and Carnap are equally far from it, and for similar reasons.
One indication of this is that Heideggers method, even if it succeeds, doesnt lead to a relaxed
sense of being once again at home with our own language, but rather produces (as, in a way,
does a pun) a sense of our alienation from it (of our distance from its true meaning). See also
Heidegger, 1993, 44b, p. 220, where Heidegger states that it is the business of philosophy
to guard the power of our most elementary words, lest they be leveled into unintelligibility by
the common understanding and thereby become a source of pseudoproblems: a thought
close to Carnaps but very distant, it seems to me, from Austins or Wittgensteins.
9
We would tend not to consider this a law of logic, but rather, perhaps, of set theory (which
we might write x({x} = {x})). But Husserl does not make that distinction (which, in its
current form, is due to Quine). (He would agree with us, incidentally, that the complement is
taken only relative to a universe: not-x is an object in the same region as x.)
10
Heidegger himself would not accept this paraphrase for various reasons, but it is not
important for our present purposes to put it into correct Heideggerian terms. (It would anyway
be difficult, since it seems there are some changes in precisely this area between Sein und
Zeit and Was ist Metaphysik?. See especially Heidegger, 1993, 40, pp. 1867, where the
nothing before which we have Angst is explicitly said to be the nothing of innerworldly beings
only, and where Angst is therefore interpreted as showing the possible insignificance only of
innerworldly beingsi.e., not of beings with the mode of being of Dasein.)
11
Despite explicit warnings to the contrary (e.g., Heidegger, 1993, 34, p. 167; 59, p. 295).
12
I.e., that by which possibility is possible for us (see Heidegger, 1993, 53, p. 262); our
Freisein fur die Freiheit (40, p. 187); our ability to choose choice (54, p. 268); our want-
ing to have a conscience (58, p. 288). Cf. Kierkegaard, 1912, 36; Kant, 1999, Ak. 4:452
(in preparation to answer the question, Wie ist ein kategorischer Imperativ moglich?): Nun
findet der Mensch in sich wirklich ein Vermogen etc.; Nietzsche, 1968, 11, p. 18: Wie sind
synthetische Urteile a priori moglich? fragte sich Kant,und was antwortete er eigentlich?
Vermoge eines Vermogens.
13
See Husserl, 1922, 17, p. 32 and 9, p. 19, and, for Tatsachen ( matters of fact in
D. Humes sense), Introduction, p. 3.
14
This reading is in agreement with Friedmans: see 2000, 67 n. 81 (although Friedmans
interpretation of Husserl is quite different from my own). Others have also noted the con-
nection between Carnap and Husserl to one degree or another. See Mayer, 1992; Richardson,
2003a and 2003b, 175, 66 n. 5; Sarkar, 2003; Roy, 2004.
15
Cf. Carnaps use of syntaktische Kategorie, together with thoroughly Husserlian lists of
examples (1931, 226, 228).
16
In the verificationist, methodologically solipsistic system of the Aufbau and the Uber-
windung, the same reduction serves both of these purposes. In later versions of his system,
where Carnap abandons both verificationism and methodological solipsism, metalogic is still
responsible both for unifying science and for establishing the legitimacy (empirical meaning-
fulness) of its concepts, but not by the same procedure. (See, for the earliest version of this,
Carnap, 1932, 4323, 440, 453, 4579.)
17
See also Carnap, 1922, 5; 1932, 433.
18
In his Intellectual Autobiography, Carnap describes this as a view about language which
developed in the Vienna Circle in opposition to Wittgenstein, first tentatively, then more and
more clearly (Carnap, 1963, 29). But the Aufbau already expresses it quite explicitly: see 19,
pp. 245; 138, pp. 1834; 141, pp. 188-9.

26
19
Cf. Conant, 2001. Conants paper is an excellent contribution to the difficult task of in-
terpreting Wittgenstein, but, in my view, underestimates the difficulty of interpreting Carnap,
who, though he (as he well knew) was no Wittgenstein, nevertheless has his own subtleties.
20
And cf. Carnap, 1963, 22: [Neurath] shared our hopeful belief that the scientific way of
thinking in philosophy would grow stronger in our era.
21
See also Carnap, 1963, 3: My parents were deeply religious; their faith permeated their
whole lives. My mother used to impress upon us that the essential in religion was not so
much the acceptance of a creed, but the living of a good life. . . . This attitude made her very
tolerant toward people with other beliefs. It is likely that Carnap heard this view about the
essential in religion in a relatively sophisticated form: his mother, Anna Carnap nee Dorpfeld,
was, as he relates, the daughter of the educational and theological thinker Friedrich Wilhelm
Dorpfeld, and a published author in her own right: see her 1903. Dorpfeld, a follower of
Herbart (i.e., a certain kind of quasi-Kantian), claimed that both orthodox and liberal theology
had made the same mistake, thanks to lingering Scholasticism and Spinozan-Schellingian-
Hegelian metaphysics: the mistake of subordinating ethics to dogmatics (see his 1895).
See further document ASP/RC081-05-06, an outline for a vaguely Aufbau-like work dated
Apr. 27, 1921 and titled Analyse des Weltbildes. The document begins with the following
Vorbemerkungen: Value of error (= harmfulness of truth). 2 constituent parts of religion: 1)
life-feeling, 2) intuitions (with which the life-feeling is connected [verknupft]). 1) can there-
fore be shaken [erschuttert] at the same time as (2): example: effect of Darwinism etc. on the
peasants . . . Solution: half-truth confuses, whole clarifies. And if one doesnt know whether
one will press through [durchdringen] (or lead through) to the whole??
22
That Nietzsches ambiguous talk about philosophers of the future is aimed at securing
our (untimely) autonomy in the present is most explicit in its earliest form (see Nietzsche,
1981, 2267), but it is clear enough in later versions, as well. (The general idea is: we give
ourselves a law by assigning to ourselves the task of producing our own masters.)
For further evidence of Nietzschean influence at this point, see ASP/RC08-05-01, Vom
Chaos zur Wirklichkeit, dated July 12, 1922 and famously labeled by Carnap as der Keim
zur Konstitutionstheorie des Log. Aufbau. In the first paragraph Carnap speaks of great
inconsistencies [Unstimmigkeiten] which extend through the whole realm of actuality, in the
face of which we are prompted to a will to a reordering which overcomes them (Wille zu
einer sie uberwindenden Neuordnung). It is this will to reordering, he continues, which
permits epistemological reflection [Uberlegung] and the fictions which appear therein, of
chaos as starting point and of the ordering principles according to which the construction
[Bau] occurs.
23
A special case of this is that any a priori knowledge of cause and effect must derive from
a free choice on our part. Carnap makes this point very early, and continues to make it later, as
well: see 1922, 346; 56; 1924, 117; 1934, 79, p. 2345; 83, p. 251; and (more clearly than
the preceding) 1935, 87.
24
See Carnap, 1974, 183L, p. 261, where he praises Wittgensteins Tractatus as very
valuable both due to its logical derivations and due to the ethical deportment [Haltung] which
speaks from it, and then quotes the famous sentence from the Foreword.
25
Whatever else one may say about Quines understanding, or lack thereof, of Carnap, he
seems to have understood very well what was, for Carnap, the most important point: that
language is both an ordinary empirical object and the object of autonomous choice. Unsur-
prisingly, given the political differences between the two, he then made it his business to
attack Carnap precisely there, from every possible angle (e.g., radical translation, truth by
convention, the analytic/synthetic distinction).
26
Quoted in Carnap, 1931, 229; Carnaps ellipses, Heideggers emphasis (according to
Carnap, though it does not match the emphasis in recent editions of Heideggers text).

27
Carnap, 1931, 230.
28
See the definition of content in Carnap, 1934 (49, p. 128).
29
The role Heidegger himself assigns to it is that it is a source, if not the source, of philo-
sophical error. See, in addition to the remark about pseudoproblems cited above (Heidegger,
1993, 44b, p. 220), any of Heideggers numerous historico-etymological analyses of philo-
sophical terminology. In the Introduction to Sein und Zeit, for example, he devotes a long
passage to explaining the meaning of Phanomenologie through an analysis of the (supposed)
original meanings of the Greek words phaino and logos (ibid., 7, pp. 2834). The implicit
point is that Husserl goes astray by using the term without accountability to those original
Greek meaningsi.e., by using it in a linguistically innovative manner; by taking advantage
of the fact that language, in the mouth of das Man, so easily accommodates new terms and
definitions.
30
Such a reading appears to be behind the assumptioncommon to Conant, Kaufer, and
many other interpretersthat Carnap regards Heidegger as having fallen into error unwit-
tingly, through some kind of laziness or carelessness or stupidity. But Carnap does not say
that and, based on the available evidence, did not think it. See especially the passages from
Carnaps diary cited by Friedman (2000, 79), in support of essentially the same point I am
making here.
31
According to Kant, what relative goods lack is a good will, which would make them
allgemein-zweckmaig (1999, Ak. 4:393). On relative versus absolute ends, see Carnap, 1963,
83.
32
This same drauen appears much later in the English phrase external questions (which,
according to Carnap, are not really questions, or not theoretical questions, at all).
33
See Kierkegaard, 1912, 8, 36, 578, and Heidegger, 1993, 40, p. 190 n. 1.
34
For this use of Erschutterung, see Heidegger, 1993, 51, p. 254, n. 1.
35
Cf. Friedman (2000, 19), who understands this quite differently.
36
See, e.g., Friedman, 2000, 12; Kaufer, 2005, 141, 146, and (implicitly) 2001, 471.
37
See, for the clearest examples, in addition to the Afterword to Heidegger, 1969 (first
published with the fourth edition, 1943), also the Introduction to that work (first published with
the fifth edition, 1949), as well as 1983, 2278 (lectures delivered in 1935) and Uberwindung
der Metaphysik (Heidegger, 1954), an essay dating from 193646.
References
Carnap, A.: 1903, Friedrich Wilhelm Dorpfeld: Aus seinem Leben und Wirken. Gutersloh:
Bertelsmann.
Carnap, R.: 1922, Der Raum: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre, No. 56 in Kant-Studien
Erganzungshefte. Berlin: Reuther and Reichard.
Carnap, R.: 1924, Dreidimensionalitat des Raumes und Kausalitat: Eine Untersuchung
uber den logischen Zusammenhang zweier Fiktionen. Annalen der Philosophie und
philosphischen Kritik 4, 10530.
Carnap, R.: 1931, Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache.
Erkenntnis 2, 21941.
Carnap, R.: 1932, Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft.
Erkenntnis 2, 43265.
Carnap, R.: 1934, Logische Syntax der Sprache. Vienna: Springer.
Carnap, R.: 1935, Philosophy and Logical Syntax; reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1979.
Carnap, R.: 1963, Intellectual Autobiography. In: P. A. Schilpp (ed.): The Philosophy of
Rudolf Carnap. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, pp. 384.

28
Carnap, R.: 1974, Der logische Aufbau der Welt. Hamburg: Meiner, fourth edition.
Carroll, L.: 1872, Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There.
Conant, J.: 2001, Two Conceptions of Die Uberwindung der Metaphysik: Carnap and Early
Wittgenstein. In: T. McCarthy and S. C. Stidd (eds.): Wittgenstein in America. Oxford:
Clarendon, pp. 1361.
Dorpfeld, F. W.: 1895, Zur Ethik, ed. G. von Rohden, Vol. 11 of Gesammelte Schriften.
Gutersloh: Bertelsmann.
Friedman, M.: 2000, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open
Court.
Heidegger, M.: 1954, Uberwindung der Metaphysik. In: Vortrage und Aufsatze. Pfullingen:
Neske, pp. 6795.
Heidegger, M.: 1969, Was ist Metaphysik? Frankfurt: Klostermann, tenth edition.
Heidegger, M.: 1983, Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik, Vol. 40 of Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt:
Klostermann.
Heidegger, M.: 1993, Sein und Zeit. Tubingen: Niemeyer, seventeenth edition.
Husserl, E.: 1922, Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen Philoso-
phie; reprinted Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1993, second edition.
Husserl, E.: 1956, Erste Philosophie, ed. R. Boehm, Vol. 7, no.1 of Husserliana. The Hague:
Nijhoff.
Husserl, E.: 1988, Kritik der Kantischen Ethik. In: Vorlesungen uber Ethik und Wertlehre,
19081914, ed. U. Melle, Vol. 28 of Husserliana. Boston: Kluwer.
Kant, I.: 1990, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. R. Schmidt, Vol. 37a of Philosophische
Bibliothek. Hamburg: Meiner, third edition.
Kant, I.: 1999, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, ed. B. Kraft and D. Schonecker, Vol.
519 of Philosophische Bibliothek. Hamburg: Meiner.
Kaufer, S.: 2001, On Heidegger on Logic. Continental Philosophy Review 34, 45576.
Kaufer, S.: 2005, Logic. In: H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds.): A Companion to
Heidegger. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 14155.
Kierkegaard, S.: 1912, Der Begriff der Angst: eine simple psychologisch-wegweisende Un-
tersuchung in der Richtung auf das dogmatische Problem der Erbsunde, tr. C. Schrempf,
Vol. 5 of Gesammelte Werke. Jena: Diederichs.
Mayer, V.: 1992, Carnap und Husserl. In: D. Bell and W. Vossenkuhl (eds.): Science and
Subjectivity: The Vienna Circle and Twentieth Century Philosophy. Akademie Verlag, pp.
185201.
Nietzsche, F.: 1968, Jenseits von Gut und Bose, Vol. 6, no.2 of Werke. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Nietzsche, F.: 1981, Schopenhauer als Erzieher. In: Unzeitmaige Betrachtungen. Frankfurt:
Insel.
Richardson, A. R.: 2003a, Conceiving, Experiencing, and Conceiving Experiencing: Neo-
Kantianism and the History of the Concept of Experience. Topoi 22, 5567.
Richardson, A. R.: 2003b, The Geometry of Knowledge: Becker, Carnap, and Lewis and the
Formalization of Philosophy in the 1920s. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
34, 16582.
Roy, J.-M.: 2004, Carnaps Husserlian Reading of the Aufbau. In: S. Awodey and C. Klein
(eds.): Carnap Brought Home. Chicago: Open Court, pp. 4162.
Sarkar, S.: 2003, Husserls Role in Carnaps Der Raum. In: T. Bonk (ed.): Language, Truth
and Knowledge: Contributions to the Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Boston: Kluwer.
Schuhmann, K.: 1977, Husserl Chronik. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Abe Stone, Heidegger and Carnap On The Overcoming of Metaphysics

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Abe Stone, Heidegger and Carnap On The Overcoming of Metaphysics

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics

11th August 2005

In his Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Spra-

1. What is metaphysics (and why does it need overcoming)?

Traditional ontology2 is a hierarchy, the elements of which are the highest

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.1

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.2

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.3

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.4

is subjectively constituted in essentially proper formations of conscious-

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.5

2. Heideggers Attempt at Overcoming Metaphysics

Although the phrase overcoming of metaphysics derives here from Carnap,

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.6

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.7

of metaphysics must be nothing. And so Heidegger asks his metaphysical

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.8

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.9

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.10

Overcoming of metaphysics is Carnaps phrase, and we must now justify

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.11

This ontological structure translates directly into an epistemological one,

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.12

Carnaps initial realm of the autopsychological clearly corresponds (as he

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.13

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.14

stitution theory is a science, indeed, but a science whose subject matter is

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.15

of all concepts, i.e. a unified language, can we overcome (uberwinden) the

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.16

the philosophical-metaphysical and religious realms which stand against

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.17

4. Carnaps criticism of Heidegger

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.18

The first column contains perfectly good sentences of customary (ublich)

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.19

tomary language, from a sensible sentence to a senseless pseudo-sentence.

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.20

inconvenient in that, by virtue of the former, it makes difficult the technical

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.21

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.22

in favor of it.36 In fact, however, as we have seen, what both Heidegger

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.23

are on the road to once more attempting philosophys always-repeated task

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.24

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.25

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.26

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.27

uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.28

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi